Why Yoga Works When Diets Often Fail

Yoga offers the inner harmony and body awareness required to achieve a healthier approach to eating. All that, and a leaner, stronger body too.

By Laurel Kallenbach

As my weight has crept higher over the past three years, my self-esteem has sunk lower, leaving me feeling depressed, inferior, and weak-willed. As I increasingly relied on food to bolster me through stressful or unhappy times, I lost confidence in my body, which seemed to betray me. My arches hurt, my back ached, I panted going up steps, I broke my foot. I knew yoga had helped me feel strong and relaxed in the past, but I was too humiliated to do it in such bad shape.

Finally, a few months ago, I started watching gentle yoga videos at home. I remember sobbing on the floor when my barely healed foot couldn't hold me in Downward-Facing Dog, so I quit. Weeks passed, and a friend invited me to a beginning yoga class. I went, determined not to expect miracles. After one class, something inside me shifted. Next thing I knew, I'd signed up for private sessions with the yoga teacher to work on modifying poses. At the same time, I started making dietary changes. After a month of doing yoga three or four times a week, my flexibility was returning, and I was ecstatic the day I held Tree Pose while balanced on my weak foot.

I'd been so excited about my new strength—which improves weekly—that I paid little attention to the scale, although I dropped a trouser size in a month. Part of my 15-pound weight loss resulted from all those fruits and veggies, but the experience taught me that yoga and other weight-loss measures are perfect partners. Making any lifestyle change is achingly slow, so what better way to practice patience than through yoga?

Keep in mind that achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight has benefits other than appearance, since excess body fat puts you at serious risk for a number of health problems. If your body fat percentage is greater than 30 percent for women or 25 percent for men, your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and colon or breast cancer increases. So in addition to helping you feel better about yourself—which is crucial for those working to lose weight—yoga can inspire your commitment to better health. Besides putting me in touch with my body, yoga has made physical activity easier and more enjoyable. I'm motivated to add more cardiovascular exercise into my routine, thereby accelerating my weight loss and helping me reduce the likelihood of developing more health problems.

Emotional Evolution

There are many reasons why people feel powerless over food and gain weight. I use food as emotional comfort or to calm my anxiety. Sometimes eating seems the easiest way to feed unfulfilled inner hunger. Often, people rely on fast food to speed them through their too-fast lives. Many simply ignore their bodies' needs for nutrition and exercise. Regardless of the cause, yoga is an antidote for food oblivion—it slows us down so we experience the body and commune with the spirit.

If there are emotionally based reasons why a person eats unwisely, it may be that yoga—especially the relaxation—opens a channel for clearing those emotions. Varshell relates a student's discovery after shedding 20 pounds: "This woman realized through yoga how many emotions she stored in her body. She usually stuffed those feelings with food," she explains. "I'm convinced if you don't allow yourself to release emotions, they'll come out as rage, disease, depression, or excess weight."

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